Useless Protesting
I can't see how the peaceful protests in NYC do anything positive, except for make people who already agree with them feel good.
I suppose it might help, through preaching to the choir, convince a very small number of people to get out and vote, where they might normally not have done so. But beyond that, nothing. Everyone's heard it before, so you're not giving any new message. We all know that a lot of people hate Bush. Yawn. So what?
Now, if you start doing civil disobedience, or worse, become violent, then you can make a difference, but you don't know if it will help you or hurt you (more likely, it will hurt). If you can provoke The Man to crack your skull open and make it look like it was all his fault, then that's about the best you can hope for, but it seems unlikely that you'll be able to do that.
But I guess I can't say the protests are entirely useless, because the problem is that while they don't stand to gain anything significant from protesting, they stand to lose a lot if they don't. Without protestors, a lot of people might get the message that Bush is not as hated as they thought, and either vote for Bush or be discouraged from voting against him.
That's kinda sad, when protesting does more harm to a cause by not happening than it does good by happening.
I suppose it might help, through preaching to the choir, convince a very small number of people to get out and vote, where they might normally not have done so. But beyond that, nothing. Everyone's heard it before, so you're not giving any new message. We all know that a lot of people hate Bush. Yawn. So what?
Now, if you start doing civil disobedience, or worse, become violent, then you can make a difference, but you don't know if it will help you or hurt you (more likely, it will hurt). If you can provoke The Man to crack your skull open and make it look like it was all his fault, then that's about the best you can hope for, but it seems unlikely that you'll be able to do that.
But I guess I can't say the protests are entirely useless, because the problem is that while they don't stand to gain anything significant from protesting, they stand to lose a lot if they don't. Without protestors, a lot of people might get the message that Bush is not as hated as they thought, and either vote for Bush or be discouraged from voting against him.
That's kinda sad, when protesting does more harm to a cause by not happening than it does good by happening.
"It is the common fate of the indolent to see their rights become a prey to the active. The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt."
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